Antenna Documentary Film Festival Announces Full Program

16 September, 2014 by
IF

Screening in Sydney from Tuesday 14 to Sunday 19 October the Antenna Documentary Film Festival today announces their full program line up. From game-changing docos, bold in style and extraordinary in form, to live interactive tales, Antenna proves yet again this is a festival with attitude, triumphs, challenges and soul.

Presenting their most ambitious program yet, filled with 35 features from over twenty countries, Antenna offers a rare opportunity to see the very best in documentary cinema from the furthest corners of the world, right to your doorstep in one superbly curated festival.

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A shining example of boundary-pushing documentary filmmaking, Choose Your Own Documentary (CYOD) will have its live interactive Australian premiere at the Festival. Based on the classic ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books, the film follows Nathan Penlington and a team of filmmakers (all festival guests) as they embark on an epic quest to unravel the mystery of an old notebook they have discovered. But there is a twist. The audience decide Nathan’s fate by using remote controls. With over 1,500 paths and multiple endings, his fate is in their hands.

“Looking at this year’s line-up, we are extremely proud of the films that we have programmed ahead of Antenna 2014 for Sydney audiences” said Festival Director, David Rokach. “We are thrilled to be screening films by established directors, such as Martin Scorsese’s latest documentary The 50 Year Argument, as well as by many talented and emerging directors from Australia and around the world”.

Antenna kicks off Opening Night with the existential black comedy, Bugarach. Teasing the line between fact and fiction, this playful film follows a small town in France predicted as being the only place in the World to be saved from the Mayan Doomsday prophecy.

Not to be out done is Catalonia’s own Tarzan, amateur movie star and architectural wonder Garrell, who conquers his greatest role yet in The Creator of the Jungle. Fashioned entirely from home videos spanning 45 years, this spellbinding film is an extraordinary portrait of a man who crafted some of the most gorgeous hidden structures known to humankind.

LGBTIQ issues are a focus at the festival with compelling tales that focus on those issues still prevalent within the community today. The three hour experimental doco What Now? Remind Me is one of the most powerful films ever made about living with HIV. Filmmaker Joaquim Pinto turns the camera onto himself, documenting his personal insights on life as he combats this illness. Limited Partnership tells the incredible story of the first legally married same-sex couple in the US. It follows their struggles with the government after the controversial rejection of a green card on the grounds of “failing to establish a bona fide marital relationship between two faggots.”

Antenna invites audiences to join the craze that swept across Argentina in Living Stars, which peers into the private lives of everyday Argentinians as they dance in their living rooms, kitchens, garages and workplaces. This fun and lively non-narrative film celebrates their infectious joyous abandonment, and has led to the film being described as the most fun audiences will have in a cinema this year.

With the escalating conflicts across the Middle East, Antenna has two powerful films which capture the anxiety, destruction and personal toll of civil war. Sundance prize-winner Return to Homs takes us deep into the Syrian conflict, tracking key players in the resistance against Bashir al-Assad's regime from 2011 to 2013. Tribeca Prize Winner, Point and Shoot tells the unbelievable journey of Matthew Van Dyke, who armed with his video camera, sets off on a Motorcycle Diaries-style adventure. Winding up in Libya, he forms great friendships that inspire him to join the rebel army against Gaddafi – all the while keeping his camera rolling.

Antenna once again presents a strong Australian competition with films about inspiring characters living on the margins. Four Australian feature films are participating in this years program; Sons & Mothers, follows an acting troupe comprised of men with disabilities who set out to create a theatrical love letter to their mothers; These Heathen Dreams rediscovers Christopher Barnett, one of Australia’s most creative and unflinching artists of all time; I Will Not Be Silenced tells the story of Australian Charlotte Campbell- Stephen, who is fierce and brave in talking about her horrific gang rape in Kenya, which led to a seven-year battle for justice and The Land Between, which gazes into the hidden lives of African asylum seekers stranded between borders.
The festival will culminate with Carlo Zoratti’s The Special Need, preceded by an award ceremony announcing the winner of the SBS Award for Best International Documentary, the Award for Best Australian Documentary and the Award for Best Short Documentary, with cash prizes totaling $6000.
Not for the faint-hearted and more importantly not to be missed, the Antenna Documentary Film Festival is set to challenge, seduce and inspire.